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UK Floods; paying the price of Tory cuts..


NormanH
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Well done Dave, unfortunately this is one cut by your ideology driven government that your cannot cover up with spin.

I am surprised the nasty rightwing tabloids haven't blamed Jeremy Corbyn for the floods by now, they have tried pinning everything else on the poor bloke.
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Do people honestly think that any other party in power would have spent more on flood defenses? To a man they would have done nothing until faced with the necessity of doing something. And how you plan for one months rainfall in one day is beyond me.
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I am dissapointed that the Guardian should consider their readers to be so idiotic as to believe their own figures, claiming that the government ahs reduced flood spending by 27% year on year, their figures show:

2010/2011 £665 million

2013/14 €800 million

2015/16 £665 million (sum not shown so figure pulled from graph)

 

For their claim to be true the £665 million would need to  have been £185 million.

 

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

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Norman, your adoration of all things Tory is clouding your judgement; projects of the kind needed to protect Yorkshire from flooding take ten years to plan and execute so and reduction in budget would hardly have made much difference in these circumstances.

Rather, the relevant agency should be carefully examined; remember these were the people who allowed the Somerset level ditches to silt up (as well as prams, supermarket trolleys and the odd car). Unless it has changed, the agency itself is headed by a Labour placeman, a former cabinet minister who is hardly able to tie his own shoelaces.
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Of course it is not the tories fault, nothing ever is...

A House of Commons Library note published in November 2014 found that spending on flood defences during the last Labour government – between 1997 and 2010 – increased by three quarters in real terms.

It however said central government spending from 2010 onwards had been cut by around 20 per cent compared to the previous spending period.

Link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/john-mcdonnell-says-cutting-foreign-aid-to-pay-for-flood-defences-would-make-matters-worse-in-the-a6789086.html

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Dear Grecian 2000, if you look at the blue link you will see evidence of a John McDonnell in the address; he has also slithered out from under the stone he shares with Mr Corbyn to make a statement about not using the foreign aid budget to pay for folk in Yorshire and elsewhere trying to struggle back to normality.

Doubtless he would increase taxes instead.
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The problem for a country like the UK where resources have been "so limited" after the financial crash, has been and perhaps even more now remains to decide how to allocate tax payers money to various projects.

The Environment Agency has been on a hiding to nothing since the conservatives came to power with their budgets so restricted that they have had to resort to "walk-away" projects. By walk-away projects I mean, build a flood wall and walk away; build an automated pump and flood gate system and walk away; designate low/no population areas that will be deliberately encouraged to flood and walk away. Such projects do require some onward maintenance but effectively it is once off expenditure (at least in the short term).

What this means however that "sensible" historic management of water is often ignored. Remember the Somerset Levels when they flooded? The EA said that dredging was not a solution to the problem. When public and political opinion built up, they were forced to dredge - and guess what - no serious floods since. The problem is dredging is that it is not a walk-away solution and has to be repeated semi-continuously.

It is interesting to note that at least one commentator has noted that when the West Riding of Yorkshire was responsible for water management, the village of Mytholmroyd regularly had river dredging and the historic regularity if flooding diminished. Since EA took over, dredging stopped and flooding has returned.

As already pointed out, can we protect everything against every flood possibility (one months rain in a few hours for example - which incidentally is not a unique event, unusual yes, but not unique)? Certainly no.

On the basis that our political leaders in warning about climate change keep reminding us that weather extremes become more likely - so heavy rain and flooding seem a not unlikely consequence; could we better protect ourselves against something that is not unexpected? I personally think yes. However the current system of "visible fairness" is not I suggest the way forward. Dave's "we are spending the same mount in the South as in the North" statement overlooks some important factors and will have some unpleasant results if left as it is.

London (pop:8.5m), a city with a long term history of flood problems but which has a flood barrier to reduce risks, will get 11 times the flood defence budget as Leeds (pop:.75m), a city with a long term history of flood problems but which does not have a flood barriers to reduce risks. York with just 150,000 inhabitants - and a very substantial long term flood history - what chance of expenditure above 1/50th that of a well protected London?

And if you happen to live in a flood prone small town like Cockermouth, Hebdon Bridge or Mytholmroyd or a village like Glenridding the message is very clear. You are not big enough to warrant a (serious) project to protect your homes and businesses. The consequences are clear, people will move away from such places because although there will be cheaper flood insurance in the future, no one wants to go through re-building their lives, homes and businesses every few years.

A policy that gives visible fairness therefore (in my way of thinking at least) is a policy that will long term destroy smaller communities. In my view therefore (and sorry Wooly if this is a bit too Trot for you), funds need to be allocated on the basis of need and risk and not per head of population. If that then requires some extra taxation or a delay in repaying the UK's long term debt, than that should be a price paying. Current estimates of the costs for December floods (pre storm Frank) are over £1.5b - or 50% of the flood defence budget for the next 5 years.
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Seeing then as according to certain members of this forum, it is the Tories fault for a months rain in a couple of days. Please explain why; when the looney left was in power that they didn't spend untold on flood damage defences. Maybe Mr Blair, Mr Brown and calamity Corbyn have a lot to answer for, plus of course the Newt loving Livingstone.
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Any and all money will continue to be wasted on "flood defences" until somehow a studied system is introduced, which forces individual authorities to coordinate their efforts, and do something more scientific than pile up earth banks, sandbags, or frameworks covered in plastic sheeting along the sides of rivers near the towns they are responsible for, which simply moves the problem further downstream.

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Indeed, NM, there is NO foolproof, long-term solution (no pun intended on solution!)

And, andy, don't forget that properties in the London area are more valuable in money terms than those in the north east by 1 to the power of 25.  Also, the south east constituents are more likely to be Tory supporters.

As the current disliked- by- me term puts it:  it's a no brainer, ain't it?  

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As I remember the Conservatives haven't had a full year in office yet, on their own account so hard to lay all the blame at their door.

I'm no great fan of DC but hopefully flood defences will become a higher priority, especially considering the housing shortage.....maybe the need to build on land that could possibly be prone to flooding will encourage more funding.
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Precisely

I tried very hard not to lay any blame at a party and mentioned only the government having to save cash.

The point is that the evidence is now there that there have to be changes in policy - more or less the same evidence that was presented after the 2007 floods, the 2011 floods - and no doubt we will now "need" another independent enquiry to tell the government of the day what most people in the street already know - even if they are not ready to fund the change. But such is the electorate.
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As governments of all parties try to take credit for anything good that happens on their watch it is perhaps not unfair for them to be blamed for the bad that happens.

Being neither a supporter of the current government or the opposition, I did think there was some merit in the shadow chancellor's suggestion that a long term plan for flood defences should be drawn up and supported by both parties so that the spending was not at the mercy of election results.

One of the problems in the UK at present is that spending is too Londoncentric. There never seems to be any shortage of cash if London wants a new concert hall but flood defences in Cumbria seem to suffer from the desire to make sure that billionaires don't have to pay too much tax.
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Maybe defence budgets of all sorts should be agreed between parties and ring fenced, or we'll have Corbyn or his ilk slashing the armed forces even more than they already have been....

Locally in the UK IIRC our new concert hall will need to be funded at least partially by commercial investment.
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It doesn't seem however to impress Sir Simon Rattle who is a prime mover in the quest for a world class concert hall in a London ?

I was lucky enough to be taken to concerts at the Festival Hall ( I watched Attenborough narrate young persons guide to the orchestra ) and Royal Albert a Hall throughout my years in secondary education...those experiences had a lasting benefit which I would hope every child could experience, whether that involves private funding or public.

( if private funding improves Readings Hexagon, ESP their choice of wine, I'd be for it ! ) although to be fair I have been enchanted by Sir John Williams and Tamsin Little there.
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Private funding is certainly easier to obtain if you are nearer to London. I feel quite deprived that there is not a single venue near where I live which would carry any kind of concert that I would want to see. My only school visit was to Stratford to see Shakespeare.

Derby had assembly rooms until they burned down in 2014 and no private investor can be found to help rebuild because the site is not large enough to accommodate audiences big enough to make a profit.

Back to flooding. I regularly drive past the farm of that great agricultural pioneer, Robert Bakewell, which is near the River Soar. He used to have a system of water meadows and I have been wondering if their re-introduction might be helpful in managing flood waters.
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